Bid part of plan to keep students from falling behind female classmates

A year after it opened the province's first publicly funded Africentric school, Canada's largest school board is poised to open a boys-only primary school next year.

The move, recommended last night as part of education director Chris Spence's new Vision of Hope plan, would create an all-boys school for Kindergarten to Grade 3. The school, which would add grades each year, would be part of an ambitious plan by the board and its newly minted director to prevent young boys falling behind their female classmates.

Spence also wants to establish around 300 boy-friendly classrooms across the city. Those classes, which he said could be developed with little cost and minimal student relocation, would focus more on hands-on learning and allowing boys to move around more inside the classroom.

The aim is to get more boys, particularly boys living in a "fatherless world," interested in education and help them avoid developing behavioural problems.

"When the tide goes up, everybody goes up with it," Spence told reporters, adding that it will help tackle safety and classroom disruption problems across the board.

But, like the debate that erupted when trustees were considering creating a black-focused school, not all education experts believe students should be segregated based on gender.

Paula Bourne, a senior research associate at U of T's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, questioned separating the guys from the dolls and whether it was a Band-Aid solution.

"Is it the fact that they are boys that is the problem?" Bourne asked yesterday. She said more likely the boys who are falling behind come from poorer Toronto neighbourhoods and don't have the same support systems at home. Conversely, Bourne said the girls in the same areas likely aren't doing as well, either.

Bourne, who has taught courses on gender issues in schooling, said historically girls have always done better academically than boys, but in more recent years, girls have been more likely to take advantage of that early education success by moving on to university and into the workforce.

"It's a bit of a bandwagon-ish thing, jumping onto this idea that we'll solve this problem of the underachieving boy by separating the classrooms," Bourne said. "If you're not careful, you're kind of promoting stereotypes that 'boys will be boys,' and 'boys are more active.' "